users directed to the wrong page

users directed to the wrong page

Hi There, we're new to using optimizely, we've been running an experiment on pages like

http://domain/detail.html?code=variableCode

we have set up a substring match on "http://domain/detail.html?code="

However http://domain/detail.html does not resolve, it redirects to http://domain/chooseCode.html, you can only get to http://domain/detail.html if you have 'code'.

So in order to be able to load the page into the editor in the edtor settings we are using the editor URL

'http://domain/detail.html?code=specificCode'

The problem we appear to be having is that sometimes users are being directed to this page, rather than being shown the page they requested, or at least they are being shown the content specific to this code rather than the content specific to their 'code'.

Have we done something wrong, is this normal behaviour, is there a way around it?

The page looks like this:

area 1: where experiment is running

area 2: content is controlled by 'code'

area 3: static content

So we need optimizely to control area 1 but leave area 2 alone to be controlled by the value of 'code' in the URL.

Re: users directed to the wrong page

Hi there. Happy to help with this, however I will need just a bit of clarification. Are you saying that when you experiment is running, your visitors are being redirected to the URL 'http://domain/detail.html?code=specificCode' with the specificCode in the URL even though this code should be dynamic?

Or, are you saying that visitors are landing on the correct URL with the dynamic code populated, but the are of the HTML is showing content that should not be there (ie from a different code)

If the latter, then it sounds like you may have used the "edit HTML" feature in the editor which essentially overwrites your HTML with the HTML in the editor. This can cause dynamic content to be overwritten by static content. Check out our article here for additional details: https://help.optimizely.com/hc/en-us/articles/200039725-The-Visual-Editor#edit_html. You can click the "Edit Code" button from within the editor to see if this might be the issue. I can provide more information on this as well.

Each shows slightly different content based on the fastcode, eg title in the first one is "You are registering with the CHS staff group", title for the second is "You are registering with the Engine Shed group" etc. with an introduction specific to this group. This is dynamic content and is dictated by the fastcode.

Our experiment shows different content below this title & intro copy block and before the form block, ranging from nothing to some images to an instructional video. We used the edit HTML tool to inject these different content blocks.

So when users follow one of the links above now it seems that, if they see a variation of the page, they not only see the experimental image / video etc that we want to be injected they also see the title / intro from https://faxi.co.uk/register.php?fastcode=BS83EZ rather than from the url they followed. The address in the address bar is the one they followed but the dynamic content is no longer dynamic.

Check it out and let me know if any of those options sound feasible. If you don't have too many fastcodes, I would recommend using the if function to populate different headers based on the value of the fastcode.

Re: users directed to the wrong page

Thanks so much for those, I can see a couple different ways to get the experimental content to show, but I still can't see how I get the correct dynamic content to show. I need optimizely to affect only the area involved in the experiment and leave the rest of the page to behave as it needs to.

Currently I've set up 4 identical experiments each pinned to an exact URL but if we get to a point where we can run this experiment over all 250 groups this isn't going to be too easy to admin.

Re: users directed to the wrong page

Hey Lewis -- Optimizely won't change the dynamic content at all as long as your are not overwriting it in the variation code. Here's an example:

<h1> DYNAMIC CONTENT </h1> <p> This is the content that you are changing with the experiment </p> <h2> MORE DYNAMIC CONTENT </h2>

As long as you only make the changes to the <p> tag and leave the <h1> and <h2> html text alone, the dynamic content will behave as normal. You **can** make styling changes to <h1> and <h2> and the dynamic content will not be affected (ie change the text color from red to blue).

The discussion I highlighted in my previous post just helps with populating dynamic content on a page by *using* an experiment to do so.

I hope this helps. Let me know if I am misunderstanding your question in any way.

Re: users directed to the wrong page

Just to come back to this, I set up those 10 or so seperate experiments to target each page specifically, but now they are not showing as getting any traffic. Since we set them up on the 13th of Feb they are showing as having received 0, 1 or 2 visitors each. We know this can't be, apart from the fact that I have personally visited those pages more than that from here, from home and on my mobile, we've had more people than that sign up to those groups, so must have come through those pages. Why might optimizely not be counting those visits and, presumably, not showing the experiments?